The Millers: CBS Sitcom Cancelled Midway Through Season Two

by Trevor Kimball, November 15, 2014

CBS has pulled the plug on one of their family comedies but it’s not the one you’d expect. They haven’t cancelled The McCarthys yet but have dropped The Millers after four airings into its second season.

Set in Leesburg, Virginia, The Millers follows a local TV news reporter (Will Arnett) who’s been hiding his recent divorce from his parents. When they hear the news, his dad (Beau Bridges) his mom (Margo Martindale) are inspired to separate and each move in with their kids. The rest of the sitcom’s cast includes J.B. Smoove, Jayma Mays, Nelson Franklin, Lulu Wilson, and Sean Hayes.

Debuting last fall, The Millers aired on Thursday nights and greatly benefitted from having The Big Bang Theory as a lead-in. The comedy’s ratings were very good — but a large percentage of viewers tuned out between the two programs. It averaged a 2.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 10.9 million viewers.

This season, CBS moved the sitcom to Monday nights where it has 2 Broke Girls as a lead-in. Despite the addition of Sean Hayes to the cast, it’s been struggling in that timeslot and hasn’t been helping new drama Scorpion. It’s currently averaging a 1.7 rating with 7.28 million — a season-to-season decline of more than 30%.

The cast and crew of The Millers will reportedly finish filming one more episode before shutting down production. A new episode is scheduled for this Monday night but, depending on the ratings, it may be pulled after that. Reruns of The Big Bang Theory performed well in the 8:30pm timeslot before Millers returned.

CBS has the fifth season of Mike & Molly waiting in the wings but will likely wait until after the holidays to give it a proper launch.

It’s been a particularly bad season for new sitcoms thus far. Bad Judge and A to Z were cancelled on NBC while Selfie and Manhattan Love Story have been canned by ABC. Mulaney on FOX is sure to be cancelled and The McCarthys is sure to be dropped by CBS as well. Only ABC’s newbie Black-ish is doing well.

What do you think? Do you like The Millers? Do you think it should have been moved back to Thursdays?